Been trying something a little different lately, where I’ve been trying to let more of the white gesso priming show through in my paintings. It feels a little naughty-and Im kind of loving it!
I’ve always been a wet-in-wet thick highlights guy. but I’m now realizing I’ve been under-using a pretty powerful tool in the toolbox: not painting stuff!
Tried to get an over exposed look with this self portrait, which led me to focus mostly on shadow shapes and leave it mostly unpainted in the brightest areas.
I wasn’t sure how it was gonna work so I did a test portrait before trying it out on the big panel. Once I had a sense that it should be okay, I tackled the portrait in the larger painting. I’m usually too lazy to do a test piece like that but this was such a departure I wanted to make sure I wasn’t charging off a cliff.
Now that it’s all blocked in, I’ve begun correcting and detailing areas out a bit more. Trying to be a bit more abstract and expressive with my mark making instead of rendering too much like I tend to do. Still lots to do with it, but I feel like it’s a clear enough start that I can develop more.
Started this other painting the other day too. We’ve got lots of rabbits in our yard and occasionally one of them will fall down into one of the window wells around the house. We’d been lucky with rescuing them but I didn’t get to this one in time sadly. Figured Id pay tribute to his memory by painting him, implementing a similar dry brushing approach leaving much of the gesso beneath exposed as highlights. Also worked very transparently on the surrounding background in order to take advantage of that underpainting, same as how I usually do the under paintings for my foliage paintings. You can get such cool transitions working transparently on a white ground like this. Rest in power, little guy.
Next steps on this one will be to glaze some Shadows here and there to push the depth a bit more, and also build some areas up opaquely as well. Due to the fact that there are areas with no paint, I feel like I should balance it out with some really thick impasto passages as well.
Love oil paints so much. Crazy how you can do it for 20 something years and still find new ways to approach it.
Love the pictures
Love the tip! Not only can we use this tip to generate textures but also the overexposure!
Thanks for your post Justin! In my opinion, It describe very well the first step to abstraction. I like
your work and often see it on Muddy’s site…
Love to see your process
Great way to add texture to the piece. Thanks for sharing!
That’s a great effect (she said quietly making a mental note to give it a try…) – and I love the foreshortened dog’s butt!
i love this kind of articles of process, great
I love when you share all the experimentation you do with different lighting scenarios. I kind of relate to this post in a recent epiphany I had while drawing with white paper.
“If the brightest I can get on this paper is the paper, well then, when I render the only thing that doesn’t have graphite on is the extreme highlight”.
Thanks for sharing Justin!
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Thanks for sharing!
Great article!
Sometimes it is way more convenient being able to apply white paint to the top of things for the highlights. But taking advantage of the white gesso is good to know. That’s a lot of skill. Thanks for sharing how that works!
The small bit featured in the email looked to me like a puzzling purplish substance is either seeping from an animal’s (presumably dead) torso, or maybe that that purple thing is an entity attached and feeding from that same unfortunate animal, and the person’s feet seem to be someone looking at the scene to try to figure out what happened, or in regret or something similar perhaps. It genuinely surprised me that it does not seem to have been the intention, seeing the whole thing now–perspective is all!
Oh, I love the textures! Astonishing subject!
gret attention to detail. loved the result
Your technique is inspiring and your insights are always appreciated. Many thanks.
The rabbit sketch reminds me of Andrew Wyeth’s watercolor work. He’s my favorite artist so that’s the highest praise in my book.